Executive Summary

Rideshare Data

This analysis relies on Transportation Network Provider (TNP) data for trips, drivers, and vehicles. These datasets are published on the City of Chicago’s Data Portal and updated quarterly. Please see the GitHub repository for source links and download instructions.

Trips Over Time

Daily Trips

This analysis uses the day that Governor Pritzker’s Stay-at-Home Order went into effect (March 21st), as a way to delineate between two time frames:

  • “Pre-COVID” (1/1-3/21) and
  • “Post-COVID” (3/21-12/31)

As the data below suggest, the use of a single date to mark the onset of the pandemic is an oversimplification, but this allows for a clean comparison of rideshare trends year-over-year.

Prior to the Stay-at-Home Order going into effect, trips were already down by about 7 percent year-over-year. However, the bulk of the decline in rideshare occurred after the during the following 9 months. From late March 2020 onwards, only 27 million rideshare trips were taken in Chicago, about 60 million fewer trips compared to the same period in 2019.

Period 2019 2020 Change Change (%)
Pre-COVID (1/1-3/21) 24,413,752 22,610,225 -1,803,527 -7%
Post-COVID (3/21-12/31) 87,064,565 27,261,160 -59,803,405 -69%
Total 111,478,317 49,871,385 -61,606,932 -55%

Trips Around 3/21/20 Stay-at-Home Order

It is clear that behavior changed in March even before the Stay-at-Home Order, as trips per day decreased significantly after Saturday, March 14th, 2020, a full week before the Order went into effect. Note that the earlier fluctuations in January and February correspond to weekday versus weekend trips.

Monthly Trips

Trips by Day of Week and Hour of Day

Day of Week

While the number of trips were down significantly in 2020 from April to December compared to the same period in 2019, rideshare trips by day exhibited the same period across years and times periods; relatively low Monday through Wednesday before rising into the weekend and peaking Saturday.

Hour of Day

Breaking out trips by hour of the day, it is clear that trips were shifted over time after the Stay-at-Home order went into effect. Weekend trips by hour (dashed line) still exhibited a late night surge, but the twin peaks of the morning and evening rush during weekdays (solid line) are less noticeable. It is clear that a higher proportion of weekday trips took place during the late afternoon hours compared to the same Post-COVID period in 2019.

Trip Characteristics

Distance

Prior to the Stay-at-Home Order going into effect, trips were 6.4 miles long on average, a 9 percent increase year-over-year. From late March 2020 onwards, however, the average trip distance increased to only slightly to 6.5 miles, a 1.7% increase compared to the same period in 2019.

Average Trip Distance (Mi.)
Period 2019 2020 Change Change (%)
Pre-COVID 5.86 6.39 0.53 9.0%
Post-COVID 6.43 6.53 0.11 1.7%

Duration

While average trip distance increased slightly, the average trip duration fell significantly in 2020. After March 21, 2020, the average trip time was 15.9 minutes, a 15 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2019. This finding aligns with Manzo and Bruno’s analysis based on a sample of trips from September 2019 and September 2020 which found a 16 percent decline in average trip duration due to a decrease in congestion.

Average Trip Duration (Min.)
Period 2019 2020 Change Change (%)
Pre-COVID 17.5 16.9 -0.6 -3%
Post-COVID 18.6 15.9 -2.7 -15%

Fares

The average trip fare in 2020 was about $0.80 higher in the first three months of the year compared to the same period in 2019, a 7.4 percent increase. However, in the period after the Stay-at-Home Order went into effect, the average trip fare in 2020 was about the same as in 2019.

Average Trip Fare ($)
Period 2019 2020 Change Change (%)
Pre-COVID $10.79 $11.59 $0.80 7.4%
Post-COVID $12.26 $12.34 $0.08 0.7%

Spatial Distribution of Trips, Post-COVID

The spatial distribution of rideshare trips that started and ended within the City of Chicago during the Pre-COVID period (1/1-3/21) of 2019 and 2020 were very similar. The maps below display how spatial patterns changed after the Stay-at-Home Order went into effect, relative to 2019.

The top 20 percent of census tracts with the most essential workers are outlined in black. At least 532 essential workers reside in each of these tracts. Combined, these tracts are home to 121,060 (41.5%) of the city’s 293,575 essential workers. “Essential workers” are defined as: healthcare practitioners and technical occupations; healthcare support occupations; (protective service occupations; EXCLUDED HERE) food preparation and serving related occupations; building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations; and personal care and service occupations.

Origin-Destination

The spatial distribution of rideshare origins and destinations are very similar. Trips are highly concentrated around the downtown core - note the logarithmic scale of each map. While the number of trips in 2020 cratered compared to the same period in 2019, most trips started or ended around the central business district. In the Post-COVID periods of both 2019 and 2020, the top three community areas (The Loop, Near North Side, and Near West Side) accounted for over 40 percent of all rideshare trips within the city.

The widespread decline in the volume of trips, however, does mask some relative changes in neighborhood rideshare usage. The second map shows how the percentile rank of each Census Tract changed during the Post-COVID period in 2020 versus 2019. For example, one tract in the West Side neighborhood of Austin was middle of the pack for trip pickups in 2019 (56th percentile). Pickups were almost cut in half in 2020, but the tract qualified as one of the more active pickup spots in the city (75th percentile). Neighborhoods on the South and West Sides saw a relative increase in their percentile rank, indicating an inelastic demand for rideshare. While few rideshare trips were made in these areas compared to other parts of the city, rideshare trip behavior was less affected during the pandemic.

These South and West Side neighborhoods include some of areas with a high concentration of essential workers, but the parts of the Southwest and Northwest Sides that saw the largest relative dropoff in their trip ranking are also home to many essential workers.

Origin

Destination

Origin-Destination (OD) Flows

Flow Types

While origin and destination tracts provide a general sense of the geographic pattern of rideshare trips, they do not capture travel flows between areas. Before analyzing trip flows, it is important to distinguish between those trips that begin and end within the same tract (intra-flows) and trips that begin and end in different tracts (inter-flows). As seen in the table below, very few rideshare trips started and ended in the same tract. About 1.5 percent of all trips were intra-flows. Zooming out to the Community Area level, a far higher percentage of trips started and ended in the same neighborhood - roughly 20 percent. These figures were relatively consistent across years and time periods.

Pre-COVID
Post-COVID
Trip Type 2019 2020 2019 2020 Total
Inter (Different Tract) 98.2% 98.4% 98.7% 98.1% 98.5%
Intra (Within Same Tract) 1.8% 1.6% 1.3% 1.9% 1.5%
Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Pre-COVID
Post-COVID
Trip Type 2019 2020 2019 2020 Total
Inter (Different Community Area) 79.8% 80.8% 82.3% 81.8% 81.6%
Intra (Within Same Community Area) 20.2% 19.2% 17.7% 18.2% 18.4%
Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Airport Trips

Across the entirety of 2019 and 2020, in both Pre-COVID and Post-COVID periods, the most popular trips were from O’Hare and Midway airports to the Loop, and vice versa. Trips to or from Chicago airports alone accounted for between 6% and 9% of all rideshare trips in each analysis period. These trips are excluded from the the OD flows maps below in order to focus on neighborhood-to-neighborhood travel patterns.

Pre-COVID
Post-COVID
Trip Type 2019 2020 2019 2020 Total
Other Trip 93.6% 92.5% 91.4% 93.7% 92.2%
To or From O’Hare/Midway 6.4% 7.5% 8.6% 6.3% 7.8%
Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

OD Flows

The maps below link the beginning and end of trips (excluding airport trips), where the color and thickness of desire lines vary based on the number of trips made between Community Areas.

The OD pairs indicate that the most common trips are short rides from and to the Loop and nearby areas like the West Loop and River North. There is also a clear pattern of trips up and down the lakefront, particularly on the North Side. These trends are in line Streetsblog Chicago’s analysis of 2018 data. After the Stay-at-Home Order went into effect, trips linking the South lakefront to the Loop and the North Side decreased dramatically.

Neighborhoods with a high concentration of essential workers (532+, top 20 percent of census tracts) are outlined in black.

Drivers